


breathed life back

by addandsubtract



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Blood, M/M, Resurrection, University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, temporary animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: Kyle watches it go and tries to breathe.





	breathed life back

**Author's Note:**

> i mentioned wanting a story about kyle rau bringing things back to life on twitter and then ended up writing a bunch of scenes. i feel like this story is pretty soft, considering. nothing here stays dead, but if descriptions of blood and such bother you, you might want to skip this one.
> 
> also i sacrificed accuracy for mood in some places, so sorry for that.

1.

It’s October in Minnesota, and Kyle is a freshman in college. It’s October, and it’s snowing, but that’s Minnesota. Kyle is sitting on the porch of the house he’s sharing with Nick and Nate and Erik, drunk, trying to convince himself that everything will be okay if he goes inside. He left the party early, and hooked up with one of the guys in his Intro to Psych class, and he’s pretty sure he has a hickey on his neck. He hasn’t told anyone he’s gay.

There’s a loud thump, and then a soft thud – a bird flying into the front window and landing in the snow. Kyle feels something like pulling, like a string wrapped around his fingers, gently tugging. He gets up, goes to look at it. It’s a robin, red and blue and black, and it’s not moving. Its little chest is still, its feathers rumpled. He reaches out to touch it, brushing his fingertips over its back, and a charge sizzles through him. His skin tingles, singed. The air smells like snow and ozone, and he hears a sharp little _crack_ as its limp neck straightens. Its chest moves as it sucks in a breath, and it hops to its feet. It shakes itself off, leans in to nips at his fingers, and then it flies off into the trees.

Kyle watches it go and tries to breathe.

 

2.

Kyle sleeps on the bus. He dreams about waking up in the middle of the night as birds fly into the glass of his bedroom window over and over, the little snick sound as the hollow bones in their wings knit together again, just so that they can do it all over. They’re trying to get to him, and they won’t die.

Nick wakes him up with a hand on his shoulder, fingers pressing into muscle.

“You were – um,” he says. “You sounded scared.”

Kyle wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. His neck hurts from where he was leaning against the window, and Nick’s face is pinched, worried.

“I’m fine,” Kyle says. It’s been a week, and he hasn’t touched anything else dead. He doesn’t know if he could do it again, but maybe he won’t have to find out.

Sometimes he feels electric, though. Like right now, just woken from sleep, with Nick’s hand huge and warm on his shoulder. He feels like he could do anything, he feels like he could pull Nick down and kiss him, and it would be okay, but he’s not stupid enough to believe that what he feels is true.

“We need you at your best,” Nick says, with a lopsided smile. His hand grips Kyle a little tighter and then slides away. “If we’re gonna win, I mean.”

“I’m fine,” Kyle says again. Nick isn’t touching him anymore, and the boldness that was building inside him deflates with it. He turns to look out the window, watches the body of a dead deer slip past. He wonders, if they stopped the bus, if he ran his hands over it, could he fix it? Would he watch all the bloody parts of it knit together, all the bones snap back into place? Would it thank him, somehow, before it left?

 

3.

Kyle showers with the team, but he doesn’t look at anyone while he does it.

 

4.

He goes home for Thanksgiving, and he and Curt play street hockey on the road out front of their parents’ house. It snowed recently, but the streets have long since been cleared, leaving banks piled up along the sidewalks that go to mid-thigh. Kyle doesn’t ask Curt about the bird, but he does let Curt score a pretty goal before he taps out.

They get tipsy on wine that their parents don’t dissuade them from drinking, and then Curt drags Kyle back outside on a walk.

“Tell me about school,” Curt says. “Tell me about Nick.”

Kyle doesn’t want to talk, and Curt knows it. He’s about to say so when he feels that _tug_ , like a fishhook in his belly, pulling, and sees blood on the snow, streaks leading from the street across one of their neighbors lawns. Kyle’s boots crunch into the frozen layer above the grass. He follows, ignoring Curt’s voice floating behind him, annoyed and worried.

There’s a cat curled up in the snow. It’s not breathing. Its white fur is splattered and matted red with blood.

Kyle glances over his shoulder at Curt, standing on the sidewalk, looking at him. He reaches out and touches the cat’s fur, fingers burrowing in until he feels the cooling warmth of its skin. A charge judders through him, and he grits his teeth against it, watching how it shudders and begins to move, front legs snapping back into place, skin growing, pink, to cover the hole in its belly, the fur sprouting from the skin. It meows so softly, eyes opening, and when Kyle rubs his fingers over its chin, it rubs back. It’s wearing a collar, a little bell that jingles when Kyle gathers it up. He walks back to the sidewalk with it in his arms.

“Oh, shit,” Curt says. “Shit.” He’s looking at the blood. It’s soaking into Kyle’s jacket, where he’s holding the cat close to his chest. He can feel it purring.

“Don’t worry,” Kyle says. “I fixed it.”

“How?” Curt says, his eyes wide, and that’s when Kyle knows that he’s alone. Whatever he can do, his twin can’t. Or if he can, he doesn’t know it. Doesn’t feel it.

“I don’t know,” Kyle says. “Call the number on its tag, we can bring it home.”

 

5.

He and Nick room together during world juniors. It’s nice, until they lose. Nick doesn’t take it well, but he’s so Nick that it would be hard to tell if Kyle wasn’t watching carefully. Kyle doesn’t take it well, either, but Nick bottles things up. Kyle sees the way his hands bunch into fists on the bench when time runs out, how he smiles and smiles, how he doesn’t break anything. Kyle would reach out, but he doesn’t think Nick is the kind of thing he can fix.

The night before they fly back, Kyle steels himself the best he knows how, and he slides into Nick’s bed. Their bags are both packed, their flight leaving in the morning. Nick is almost asleep, but he turns into Kyle’s touch when Kyle reaches for him. He kisses back when Kyle kisses him. His hands are callused and so large on the side of Kyle’s face, and his neck, and his ribs. There’s no tug, not like when Kyle feels the pull of dead things calling out to him, but Nick isn’t dead. Nick isn’t dead at all. They lost, but they’re still alive.

He kisses Nick until his mouth is sore, and they’re so closely wound together that Kyle can feel Nick’s heart beating. They fall asleep like that, breath loud in the quiet room.

 

6.

Kyle doesn’t feel it much, in January. He spends more time inside, just in the rink, in his room, in Nick’s room. Sometimes they’re on the bus, and it pulls at him, swelling up, and up, and when he looks outside, there’s something dead on the road, calling to him. It should bother him more than it does.

They get their first real blizzard before the month is out. Practice isn’t cancelled, but classes are. He walks to campus with Nick and Nate, scarves pulled tight over their noses and mouths. Kyle doesn’t sneak any glances at Nick, not while Nate is there, but he thinks about doing it.

They get to the rink, and that’s when Kyle feels it. He stops walking.

“Kyle?” Nick says, head tilted. Nate is taking sips of coffee from this thermos, eyebrows raised. Kyle shrugs.

“Go on,” he says. “I’ll catch up.”

He’s already tired of this – the blood, the pain, the gross slide of organs growing back together – but if he can fix something, if he’s able, can he really say no? Ignore the way it calls out for him?

And he thinks, _why now?_

He walks around the side of the building, and a little robin flits down from the rooftop to land on the grass next to his feet. It hops up on top of his shoe, and delicately pecks at his jeans.

Not something newly dead, then. Something previously dead.

Kyle crouches, fingers brushing the top of its head. He can feel it pulse, somehow, the life in it – the spark that was his, but is its now, for as long as it lasts. It feels _alive_.

“You already said thank you,” Kyle says. “You didn’t need to come back.”

Nick, standing on the walkway, says, “You talk to birds, now?” Kyle jolts, a little gasp escaping from his mouth, but when he looks at Nick, Nick is smiling. The robin hops up to the top of Kyle’s knee, tugs at a strand of hair until it come out, and then flies away with it. A souvenir, maybe. Kyle doesn’t know anything.

“Kyle?” Nick’s face is concerned, now, his cheeks red from the cold, the comforting mittens his grandparents gave him last Christmas still on his hands. Kyle stands, walks closer, and leans in. He presses a kiss, quick and furtive, to the corner of Nick’s mouth.

“It’s nothing,” Kyle says. “Practice, right?”

Nick’s forehead wrinkles, but he doesn’t push. “Yeah.”

 

6.

Kyle wakes up at 2am, and it takes him a moment to figure out why. They’re in Omaha for the weekend, just played back-to-back away games against Nebraska-Omaha, and it’s been raining since yesterday. They’re leaving in the morning, but Nate said something about tornadoes outside the city, which Kyle hasn’t ever had to worry about much. He hopes they’ll be able to make it home.

Thunder cracks outside, a spray of lightning against the curtains, and the pull that soars through Kyle in that moment makes him sit up. There is something outside.

He considers trying to ignore it – wait for the morning, maybe – but the tug redoubles, a stitch in his lungs like he’s been skating for two hours. He gets up, shoves his feet into his boots, and stuffs his room key into the pocket of his sweats.

Outside, he’s soaked in seconds. The rain is sheeting down, frigidly cold, and Kyle pushes through it. Following – just following. There’s a toppled tree on the empty lot next to the hotel, and he finds a family of raccoons there, beneath the weight of the trunk, an adult and three babies. One of the babies is still alive, making wet, whining sounds, and Kyle can’t bear it.

He kneels in the mud, digging with his fingers, scraping, scooping clumps of dirt out of the way, until he can pull the three trapped animals out from underneath. He presses his hands against their wet, matted fur, the water sluicing down his arms, plastering his hair to his head. He’s shivering, so cold, but something about the electricity that runs through him still feels good. There’s a twitch, and then another – paws curling, little noses wrinkling. He feels the adult breathing, first, and then watches the babies start to move. They mewl, pressing close to their parent, their mother, probably, and it turns to him with sharp eyes, and glinting teeth, its paw reaching out for his hand. It touches his finger, clutches it between its palms, and then it nudges its children up, herding them away, hopefully to safety.

Kyle is soaked and dirty and so alive. He watches them go, and then sways, standing, until he can steady himself. He walks back inside, arms wrapped around himself. He’s so tired, like all that energy came from inside him, but he can’t stop smiling. He starts to stick his key into the door of his hotel room, and then he stops. He’s still shivering, and he can’t feel the tips of his fingers or his toes. He turns to walk further down the hall, and knocks on Nick’s door.

It takes Nick a few minutes. He squints through the gap in the door, and then his face goes open with surprise.

“Kyle? What the fuck?” He’s already opening the door before Kyle can even ask if he’s allowed in. Nick tugs him inside by the wrist. Kyle take it as permission.

He starts to shuck off his wet clothes. He’s trembling so hard that Nick has to help him. His voice shakes when he asks, “Can I sleep with you?”

Nick’s mouth purses, unhappy, but he brushes the wet hair off of Kyle’s forehead. It’s too tender, and Kyle has to close his eyes. “Promise you’ll tell me what’s going on,” Nick says.

“Promise,” Kyle says. Something about touching Nick is driving the exhaustion away, like Nick’s hands on him are a source of energy, filling in the empty space inside him. He hadn’t realized how empty he felt until Nick touched him, one hand the side of his face, the other on the crook of his arm.

Nick kisses Kyle’s forehead and leads him to bed, and doesn’t ask anything else. Kyle presses into Nick’s space, too tired to worry much about it, seeking the warmth of Nick’s body. He’s asleep almost immediately.

 

7.

When Kyle wakes in the morning, he’s so warm that the cold from the night before seems almost impossible. Nick is still sleeping, and Kyle considers sneaking out. He doesn’t, though, even if he got dirt all over Nick’s sheets, and shoulders, and in his hair. Instead he presses his mouth to Nick’s, soft, and then again.

Nick wakes up slowly, and when he smiles, it makes Kyle feel like he’s accomplished something real, not just scared Nick in the middle of the night. Like maybe Nick wouldn’t have minded Kyle here anyway.

“Can I borrow your shower? And some clothes?” Kyle can feel his face turning red, but he didn’t really bring a change of clothes, and everything he was wearing last night is filthy.

“Yes and yes,” Nick says. His fingers are gentle, touching Kyle’s side, and they’ve never spoken about this, about the way that Kyle just shows up, just pushes himself into Nick’s space and Nick lets him. Nick never asked for anything before the promise last night, and mostly Kyle is glad. The more Nick asks, the more likely it is that Kyle will tell him no. The more he thinks about it, the more he can talk himself out of it.

Nick doesn’t climb into the shower with Kyle, though he could, if he wanted, and afterward Kyle uses his toothbrush, and rolls up the legs of his borrowed sweats. He’s not wearing underwear, because somehow that feels too weird. He’ll head back to his room to change before they have to go.

“Kyle,” Nick says, when Kyle is turning to leave. Nick is behind him, and he presses his palm to Kyle’s chest, over his heart. “You promised.”

Kyle looks at him, and thinks about saying those words – _I can bring things back from the dead_ – and he can’t make himself do it. Instead, he says, “I know. I will, but it’ll be easier to show you.”

Nick’s mouth thins into a line, but when Kyle leans in to kiss him, he still kisses back.

 

8.

Nick doesn’t push, because he’s good at that. He’s good at waiting, or at least good at pretending he’s good at it.

Sometimes Kyle feels like Nick is too good at hiding, but then he’ll be pacing in the living room, on the phone with his dad, and his face will just – freeze. Go blank. Kyle doesn’t usually want to hurt anyone off the ice, but in those moments, he’d hurt Nick’s dad if he could.

“You know you can be sad, if you want,” Kyle says, once. It’s after Omaha, midway through February, and Kyle’s room is the coldest in the house. He spends a lot of evenings in Nick’s room, watching Netflix on Nick’s computer.

Nick doesn’t pause the movie, but he does look over. “I am, sometimes. But I’d rather not be, you know?” He smiles, crooked, and Kyle wants to touch the corner of his mouth, to see if it feels real. Maybe they’re both good at hiding.

“Is it that easy for you?” Kyle asks.

“Not always,” Nick says. “Being here helps. You help.”

He says it like it’s simple, like it’s obvious. It takes Kyle’s breath away. It’s like feeling something that shouldn’t be alive moving underneath his fingers.

Kyle is quiet for a long time. He can’t figure out what to say, or how to say it. Nick goes back to watching the movie like nothing has changed, like he hasn’t completely rearranged anything. Finally, Kyle says, “You help, too.”

Nick smiles at him. This time, Kyle does reach up to touch his mouth, and it feels real.

 

9.

Kyle makes Nick wait until March. He doesn’t mean to, but that’s what happens. It’s Sunday, and they don’t have a game or practice. Kyle hears tapping on his window, and when he looks up, the robin is there, peering in at him. It taps again with its beak. Kyle lets it in.

It hops in, and tugs at his fingers. Kyle says, “One second,” and goes to get Nick.

Nick is napping, but he’s easily roused. Kyle wants to push the hair off of his forehead, the kind of easy touch Nick gives him all the time, but he doesn’t. He shakes Nick gently, until he yawns and opens his eyes.

“I think I can show you, now,” Kyle says.

“Oh,” Nick says. “I thought you didn’t want to.”

Kyle’s so nervous about it that the idea makes him feel slightly nauseous, but he says, “I promised.”

Nick looks at him for a long time moment, but then he says nothing. He slides out from underneath the covers.

They bundle up in their coat and scarves, hats and boots. There’s still snow on the ground. When Kyle steps out onto the porch, the robin flits down to him, chirping. Kyle wonders if he did something to it, when he brought it back, but he can’t mind.

“Is that – the same robin I saw you talking to in January?” Nick asks. His cheeks are red from the cold, but he looks so shocked.

“Yeah,” Kyle says. “It gets weirder.” He doesn’t think that Nick will hate him, but it’s a possibility. Not everyone is Curt.

The robin flies off into the woods, and Kyle follows. He can – feel it, somehow, the same way the further they get away from their street, the more he can feel that electric tug. Maybe he could feel all of them, if they were close enough. Maybe he could take the spark he gave them back. He can’t imagine why he’d want to.

Maybe he only has so much to give, though. He doesn’t know.

“Kyle?” Nick asks, uncertain.

“C’mon,” Kyle says, and grabs his hand. Kyle can feel Nick’s fingers flex, and then curl tighter, as Kyle leads them further into the woods, following the trail the robin leaves behind. He can tell they’re getting close when it starts to hurt, an ache in his chest, a sharp pain in his side.

Nick’s brow is furrowed, his mouth pinched, but he lets Kyle lead him into a clearing. The robin is sitting on the branch of a birch tree, chirping. Kyle sees the blood, a trail scraped into the ground, and falls to his knees in the snow. He lets go of Nick’s hand.

In the center of the clearing is a deer. A doe. Her eyes stare at him, round and huge and sightless, her fur sprayed with blood, the gaping entry wound in her side, but no corresponding exit wound. Someone shot her, and she called to him. When he crawls closer, the blood gets on his pants, the fabric of gloves. He tugs them off, leaves them in the snow.

“Kyle?” Nick asks, louder this time. Kyle ignores him.

He puts his hands on her side, rubs down over her belly, and feels for breath, but there is none. No breath, no heartbeat. He closes his eyes, and lets the charge sizzle through him. It’s strong enough to make him cry out, the sound loud in the quiet of the clearing. The snow muffles almost everything else. He presses his forehead to her neck, and breathes, and breathes. The pull in his core, the way the energy moves, makes him whimper. It hurts.

Then, he feels a shuddering work through her, and her legs kick. She heaves a huge breath. Kyle can feel her heartbeat against the skin of his forehead. She makes a sound, the cross between a low and a chirp, a sound – and when Kyle opens his eyes, he can see the bullet, shining in the snow where it slipped out of her as she healed. He reaches over and picks it up, and then pushes unsteadily to his feet.

He doesn’t realize how weak he is until he starts to fall. Nick catches him.

“Kyle, what the fuck,” Nick says, but he doesn’t sound scared. The doe heaves herself up out of the snow, and nudges Kyle in the center of his chest, like a horse or a cat might, a gentle headbutt. Then she trots off into the woods, leaving behind only a puddle of blood on the leaves and snow. Kyle turns to look at Nick, reaches up to touch his face. He gets blood on Nick’s cheek. Nick must feel it, but he doesn’t wince. He just looks at Kyle with wide eyes, mouth open and pink.

“So that’s what’s going on,” Kyle says.

“Did you bring the robin back, too?” Nick asks, like that’s the most important thing. Kyle can’t tell if he’s weak just from the energy loss, or from giddiness, or from relief.

“Yes,” Kyle says. “Yeah, I did.”

 

9.

Nick follows him into the shower this time. They both need to wash off the blood, and there isn’t a more private place in the house. Kyle will probably have to throw out his jeans. Nick won’t stop touching him, which is okay, because Kyle can feel heat, energy, leaking back into him everywhere they touch.

“What about Curt?” Nick asks. He’s shampooing Kyle’s hair for him. Kyle didn’t think he would ever have something like this. He’s still not sure he should.

“Not that I know of.” Kyle tips his head forward underneath the water so that he doesn’t have to say, _I don’t know why, I don’t know anything_.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Dead things call out to him, ask him to help them. Nick just wants to kiss him, it seems like. Somehow that seems even more improbable.

“You’re amazing,” Nick says. “You’re magic.” His fingers trace over Kyle’s collarbones, and his thumb rubs over one of Kyle’s nipples. Kyle tries not to arch into it too much. It’s not worth pretending that he doesn’t like it, he knows so, and Nick wouldn’t mind anyway, but Kyle has years of pretending to unlearn.

“I’m not,” Kyle says. “You are.”

It feels truer to him, anyway.

 

10.

Kyle comes out to his parents in April, comes out the team in May. They don’t win a championship, and Kyle brings back two more birds, a bunny, a garter snake. It tires him out less, but maybe that’s just because they’re all small. He doesn’t feel any stronger, or faster, or better. He just feels like himself.

“Could you bring back a person, do you think?” Nick asks. They’re watching Netflix again. Kyle’s clothes are on the floor. He doesn’t sleep in his room very often at all anymore.

“I don’t know. I don’t really wanna know, I think,” Kyle says. He can only imagine what it would feel like, being around a person he brought back. Would they be the same person? Would they remember their life, their wants, their personality? Would they be obligated to love him the same way his robin does? The same way the doe and the raccoons and the garter snake do? “So don’t die, okay?”

It’s not as funny as he thinks it’s going to be when he says it, but Nick grins anyway. “Got it,” he says. “I’ll do my best.”

Kyle would bring Nick back, is the thing. He doesn’t say it like that, though. He thinks it would be too telling. Instead he says, “Okay, good,” and when Nick turns his head to kiss Kyle’s shoulder, he smiles.


End file.
